Xin Chen won first place in the poster competition at the 39th Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, held July 15-20 in Denver, Colo. Mr. Chen is a Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Mr. Chen presented his work entitled "Estimation of Guided Wave Scattering Matrices from Spatially Distributed Transducer Arrays," which illustrates how to estimate far-field scattering behavior of elastic waves from damage in plate-like structures using very sparse measurements.

A Ph.D. student in the Quantitative Ultrasonic Evaluation, Sensing, and Testing Laboratory, he is co-advised by ECE Professor of the Practice Thomas E. Michaels and ECE Professor Jennifer E. Michaels who were both co-authors on the paper. Mr. Chen's work on the poster was motivated by a recently completed Air Force Research Laboratory project on understanding and exploiting the effects of stress on ultrasonic guided waves as applied to in situ monitoring of structural integrity. He will continue this work under a recently awarded fellowship from the American Society for Nondestructive Testing.

In addition to Mr. Chen's award, students from Laurence Jacobs' research group received second and third places in the poster competition. Dr. Jacobs is a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Engineering.